Nintendo Redivivus: how to resuscitate an old friend

Today we've got something for you that's a little off the beaten path: how to bring back your old 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System from the dead. Rob Nelson is here with the surgical know-how, and if you've got a NES laying around begging for a little retro fun, then this article is for you.

Thanks to this wonderfully advanced piece of 8-bit hardware, a large number of us gamers got our start in gaming at a young age. Then we went off to college, where we spent less time playing and more time trying to get the damn console to work. The frustration of getting your favorite game to work without wiping your save game, or restarting it after the screen turned to junk 15 minutes into the game; ah, the memories. To be young again, and to have a pristine NES.

I revived mine through a much simpler method. The corrosion on the connectors is the main problem, so I used a q-tip with "Simple Green" on it and ran it across the cartridge slot pin connectors, and presto -- back to normal. 30 second fix.

My grandfather, or all people, is the king of Tecmo Bowl. He has like 12 notebooks full of the codes, from every game he has played. He's won the Tecmo Bowl with every team in hundreds of season combinations, whilst being unscored upon.

For a while, he tried to see what the greatest point differential he could have was, ie "How bad can I kick the crap out of Detroit?", then it was "How few points can I score in a season and still win?"

He truly is a skilled tecmo player, he has also mastered all of the nintendo golf and baseball games. He never did figure out mario, or any of that.

Maybe I can revive my old nintendo, and let him get some more play in.

I'll just need to get some good controllers for the old man. I was thoroughly rough on them as a 10 yr old.

Just remove the top cover, and the loading mechanism. Clean your contacts. Then you can insert a game, hold it down, and wiggle it around and Reset until it works, then hold it down with something. It won't do you any good if your connector is truly hosed, but it's worth a shot before you break out the soldering iron.

I am sorry but that has to be the most f**#$%DC%%$DC%%Ded way to get your NES working again. There are countless connectors (brand new, I bought two just in case) being sold on Ebay and all you have to do is chuck the old one and install the new one. Voila!

quote:Originally posted by MJK:I've always thought it would be cool to somehow update a ROM of the game with the modern league. Unrealistic, yes, but cool.

With ROM/Emulator, this is *so* cake. I modified Tecmo Super Bowl so that SF WR #82 John Taylor is instead #87 Matt Mullen (me), and pumped his stats so I can run 35MPH and shake off Lawrence Taylor like a bug. It'd be trivial to do the whole league, just tedious.

quote: the expansion port on the old nintendo is for a cdrom addon that they were thinking about producing. it is what became the psx1

CD-ROM was brand new in 1985, when the NES came out. I'd imagine that it would have been terribly expensive, just like any brand new tech, so it seems unlikely to me that the expansion port would have been intended for that. And you're talking about a gap of nearly 10 years between that and the Playstation. There's no way they would have used something that old as the base, aside from the fact that one is Nintendo and the other is Sony.

Xyzzy: no, it wasn't used for Rob. I have Rob, and it did not physically connect to the NES box in any way. It was controlled by flashes on the TV screen, and a controller placed in a caddy for it to use.

The PSX didn't come out of the NES, it came from the CDROM add-on for the SNES.Nintendo got Sony to develop it for the SNES(to counter Sega CD, I guess), but N backed out and Sony went on their merry way with what they had already developed. The rest is history.

Ah, but the real Playstation was nothing more than a blubbering piece of poo. Then in 1995 they fixed it up a bit and gave it an X, thus the origin of the X in PSX is explained! Sorry if you knew this already!

The way I fixed my NES was to buy a re-designed one. This is one of those little top loaders stores had for all of about three days before they were pulled. No flashing screens, ever. It's moderately expensive, as they are sort of on the rare side, But it looks cool.

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I'm going to try and address a few things that people have said, both good and bad, but before I do, here's a simple reminder:

This is an article that I proposed to Ars Technica and had a lot of fun writing (notice the beer bottles in the pictures). If you don't like what I did, or think you can do it better, please, write your own article. I did this mostly because I found a variety of ways to fix your NES, but none of them had a good presentation - they all seemed to be hosted on an all-neon-pastel web site, contained very bad engrish, or only worked if you modded your NES into a portable at the same time. One also told you exactly how to do everything but was just a text file. If you didn't like the article and have another fix, let's see it. Otherwise, some criticism on the article, not comments on my brainpower, will be more effective.

quote:I revived mine through a much simpler method. The corrosion on the connectors is the main problem, so I used a q-tip with "Simple Green" on it and ran it across the cartridge slot pin connectors, and presto -- back to normal. 30 second fix.

I have three Nintendos I've tried this on, and only one of them worked that way. Maybe it was also a bent pin problem, and some other GESC threads have mentioned a bad chip on the board, but the other two only had mild improvements after the swabbing. I never tried "Simple Green" though...

quote:Also of note: if your Nintendo isn't working due to the pins themselves being bent back (the ones in the black connector the cartridge fits into) you can physically pull them out (with a slotted screwdriver, just place the tip near the edge that goes into the respective connector, and push up), rebend them down, and put them back in. Worked for me quite nicely...

That's also a workable fix, altho mine seemed pretty snug. I found it very easy to break the pins this way on the replacement connector I used, but didn't try it on the original.

quote:That guy was on acid when he took those pics. I could barely tell what he was talking about looking at the images ...

Writing was never my strong point. I'd be delighted (really) if you suggested how I might improve upon it. If it was the photography, however, I blame my brother

quote:I can't believe ARS posted the ass-loading "fix". Buy a proper connector and fix it without having to solder and cut the casing up.

I expected a more technical fix from an enthusiast site than this retarded one.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Did you mean more technical, or more proper? None of the other solutions suggested seem more technical, so I'd like to know your technical fix.

As to why I did the ass-loading "fix", there's a simple reason. I hate the push-down method. I have two dogs that always seem to trip over the cords, usually ripping it out without knocking the NES over, but the cartridge would always eject. With the ass-loading fix, the cartridges are pretty damn tight in the connectors and it really takes some slapping around for the NES to reboot itself now. It's fallen off the shelf once since I did this, in fact, and it didn't reboot. I also don't have to deal with pushing the cartridge down, left all the way, then back to the right 2 millimeters anymore. You may not agree, but I did have a reason for doing things this way. Perhaps I should have expounded on that a bit more in the article.

quote:Shoulda just swapped it to a new custom case ;o)

The only reason I didn't try this is because the power and video inputs go into a big box that's soldered onto the motherboard. I don't have a de-solderer and didn't feel like getting one, so any case I would have needed to find would be the same size anyway. Other case-mod sites suggest splitting the solder job and placing the power/video box directly underneath the mobo to avoid the odd shape.

quote:Just remove the top cover, and the loading mechanism. Clean your contacts. Then you can insert a game, hold it down, and wiggle it around and Reset until it works, then hold it down with something.

I tried this one first, and I couldn't find an actual fix for it that would allow you to put the lid back on the case. I did find that if you put a spacer below the cartridge, the push-down lid is more likely to rest in the correct position. You just have to find the right sized spacer, and it seems to vary by NES.

quote:Despite the whining in this thread, thanks for this article. I have a friend who has been trying to fix his NES, and I'm sure he'll be stoked to see this. My NES, god love it, is still alive and kicking /me knocks on wood

Thanks, I'm glad someone enjoyed the article. You can even just take the part I suggested and shove it into the original connector, but that wasn't even any fun. I guess maybe I was confusing some of the nerds here with the guys I used to watch Tool Time with.

quote:With all due respect to Mr. Nelson, that is a real hachet job.

It was never intended to be like one of those case mod stories, where the guy brings his PC into the metalworking shop where he works and comes home with a quisinart hanging off the USB port I'd love if I had the tools and the time, but it was meant to be a fun and functional repair to the NES, nothing more.

If anyone else has suggestions on how to improve the article, let me know. Thanks for the support and the criticisms. Enjoy.

Hey Rob, where is your brother James from? I know a James Nelson who works as an electrical engineer and likes fixing up old video games. I'm sure James Nelson's are a dime a dozen but thought it might be more than coincidence.-Andy

quote:Xyzzy: no, it wasn't used for Rob. I have Rob, and it did not physically connect to the NES box in any way. It was controlled by flashes on the TV screen, and a controller placed in a caddy for it to use.

I've got rob too. Did you get yours in the package deal with the NES? I only ever had Gyromite, did anyone ever have stack up? I never even saw that one in stores. How far did you actually get using the robot before you took the darn controller out of the cradle and set a book on it?

quote:Originally posted by Zider:Wasn't the PSX actually the development version, but everybody called the final Playstation PSX just because they didn't know any better? That's how I always thought it was..

PSX originaly stood for "PlayStation eXperiment." The name given to it during it's developmental stage. Once released, it was still often refered to as "PSX".

As for my NES, I got it working. All I had to do was find an AC adapter. I used the one to my DexDrive. Little higher voltage than the NES is designed for (12V versus 9V) but the amps are about the same. Right now I just have Final Fantasy with me. I can not beleive the game's save data content was still intact. It's been 12 years or so since I last tried FF.

"Thats a ghetto way to turn your type 1 nes into a type 2 ;D" That doesn't even begin to convey what a jerry rig he's done. I will be emailing Mr. Nelson and cc'ing the approriate people at this site with the PROPER & CORRECT way to refurb or repair your NES. This is absolutely shameful. First class butchering done to those NES. Geez man, you know there's a right way to do things, right? It only involves a little research. I've fixed several myself and NOT ONCE did I have to use a friggin hacksaw or soldering gun. For the love of GOD stay away from video game consoles. Expect my email in the next few days, with a FRESH link to where you can purchase the 72 pin connectors. And no, you don't have to wait 3 months to get it. =)

That is a good site, with helpful photos. In the past few years, I have done this kind of job on 6 nintendo NES to this date. I have used variants of the method showed here, but never took the time to document it. Bravo to the autor of this site!

I can say that overall, the units that I repaired started working again, but there was always some little issues that sometimes made things still a bit complicated.

The new connector that is to replace the old one should be chosen carefully... You have to understand that the original connector has a weird feature in a sense that its pins on one row are not exactly positioned one over the other row of pins. In other words, pins touching the top line of the cartridge edge are a bit offset on the other line.

What I noticed is that, most replacement connectors will be symmetrical, rather than offseted. And I also noted that the connector on some game cartridges have also a small offset. For that reason, for those games, even with the modified nintendo connector, you sometimes have to press on the cartridge (or use a rubberband) to apply pressure on it, to the side where the cartridge pins are offseted.

It is a bit annoying but at least the console is usable. As such, I would suggest to leave an additional 1/8 to 1/4 of an inch in the opening of the case around the cartridge insertion area, so you can move it up or down a little to circumvent for this little flaw with the new connector.

The method I use now is to buy connectors with longer soldering pins, and bend them 90 degrees, so to make the NES work like the Nintendo 64, i.e. with the cartridge inserted straight on top of the unit. Looks better and is easier to work with!